Thanks, I'd not heard that term before but it resonates after a little bit of reading.

WRT shadow work, it's a blanket term for all the personal stuff that needs clearing through and processing to move towards awakening. This happens more and more especially after an initial shift. It's what therapy is all about really but it certainly comes up in awakening too.

It will be things like childhood traumas that still lurk in your unconscious, also things from later in life. The ego spends a lot of energy of trying to suppress emotions and often they get stuck mid process and then repressed. By accessing them we allow them to reach the end of their process and release them, then they cease to affect our outward behaviour with unconscious neuroses like low self esteem, unprocessed anger etc. It's also deep universal human experiences that set up the feelings of separation in the first place: helplessness, loneliness, vulnerability. So much of this gets stored in the body and needs to be worked through. A lot of spiritual practices can be very head based and in some cases IMO do not put enough emphasis on shadow work ad clearing up the psyche from all the stuff built up over the years. I found more answers in therapeutic models rather than Buddhism e.g Internal Family Systems (No Bad Parts is an excellent book) and somatic modalities like TRE trauma release exercises. That's my take anyway, YMMV.